(Reuters) -U.S.-based job search platform Indeed said on Wednesday it will cut about 2,200 jobs, or 15% of its workforce, joining a host of companies rationalizing their labor force following a pandemic-fueled hiring boom.

Chief Executive Chris Hyams, who will take a 25% cut in base pay, said future job openings in general were at or below pre-pandemic levels and that the company was too large.

Corporate America has been laying off staff at a pace not seen since the financial crisis over a decade ago, bracing for a an economic downturn triggered by aggressive rate hikes by central banks around the world.

Meta Platforms Inc and Amazon.com Inc have announced a second round of layoffs as they look to cut costs.

For Indeed, among other support measures as part of the severance package, affected employees will receive January through March bonus, regular pay for the month, accrued paid time off and access to mental health services, according to a company blogpost.

Indeed’s revenue from human resource technology will decline in fiscal 2023 and 2024, Hyams said, adding that U.S. job openings will likely fall to pre-pandemic levels of 7.5 million or even lower in the next two to three years.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Shounak Dasgupta)

(Reuters) – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Wednesday he was concerned about the effect of a Federal Reserve decision to raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.

“There are competing equities on both sides,” said Schumer. “I will say I am concerned about its effect on the economy.”

(Reporting by Moira Warburton and Susan Heavey in Washington; writing by Costas Pitas; Editing by Eric Beech)

FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) -The European Central Bank will need to raise interest rates further if inflation develops along the path it forecast last week and it is far too soon to talk about cutting rates, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said on Wednesday.

The ECB last week raised rates by 50 basis points to 3% but provided no guidance on future moves as turbulence in the banking industry clouded the outlook and risked morphing into a broader crisis that could weigh on the real economy.

Nagel, an influential conservative voice on the ECB’s 26-member Governing Council, said that banks had coped well and the sector was resilient with strong buffers, so the risk of contagion is low.

“If inflation develops as projected, further interest rate hikes have to follow in upcoming meetings,” Nagel said in London. “We have to tame inflation, and to do so, we have to be bold and decisive. In my view, our job is not done yet.”

He said talk of rate cuts in the coming year was “much, much, much too early”.

“We are approaching restrictive territory,” Nagel said, referring to a rate that curtails growth. “I do not know when we will more or less be there…but what I know is that when we are there we have to stay there and not come down too early.”

Markets only weeks ago expected the ECB to lift rates by another 100 bps in the coming months but the bank rout, triggered by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the United States and the troubles at Credit Suisse, overwrote these bets.

Investors now see only about 55 bps of additional hikes, with the next move due in May, but that pricing is still up from Monday when markets bet that the ECB was done and the next step would be a rate cut within months.

“In the event that financial market tensions continue or spread to the euro area, we are prepared to respond to preserve financial stability in the euro area,” Nagel said.

But rates need to keep going up because inflation will remain too high in the near term and underlying price growth is proving to be stubborn.

“The projection still contains significant uncertainty, and in particular upside risks,” Nagel said. “Wages may increase even more strongly than assumed in the projections.

(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi and Marc Jones; Editing by Alison Williams, Kirsten Donovan)

(Corrects paragraph 1 to say co has “raised prices” and not “plans to raise prices”, paragraph 4 to say “increased prices” and not “would raise prices”, updates share move)

By Radhika Anilkumar

(Reuters) – Fevertree Drinks has raised prices of its tonics and mixers and is planning to increase production in the United States to cope with the soaring cost of glass bottles and glass shortages in Britain, it said on Wednesday, boosting its shares.

Energy and commodity costs have surged since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, leading companies across the globe to hike prices and look for savings, while households struggle to manage their bills.

Fevertree, which sells most of its upmarket mixers in glass bottles, warned in January its profits this year would be hit by an estimated 20 million pound ($25 million) increase in glass production costs.

The London-based company, which supplies to about 85 countries, said it had already increased prices across its markets by about 5% in 2023.

From 2024, it also aims to produce all the bottles and cans it needs for the United States locally, Chief Financial Officer Andrew Branchflower said during its earnings presentation.

“Markets have reacted well to news that it (Fevertree) plans to ramp up U.S. production and to pass on costs to its customers in order to protect margins,” Mark Crouch, analyst at social investing network eToro said.

Fevertree shares which rose as much as 12.2% on Wednesday, settled up 9.5% at 1,180 pence.

“Whilst the group continues to operate in a challenging cost environment, we are resolutely focused on delivering a wide range of initiatives across the business that will optimise operational capabilities and underpin our confidence in driving margin improvement in 2024 and beyond,” CEO Tim Warrillow said.

Fevertree, founded in 2003, said it was working with glass suppliers to mitigate costs wherever possible.

The company’s tonics currently retail at about 1.7 pounds to 2 pounds at supermarkets across Britain, while Coca-Cola-owned rival Schweppes sells at around 1.3 pounds.

Coca-Cola HBC AG, one of Coca-Cola’s many bottlers worldwide, said in February it would also increase prices to tackle rising costs.

Fevertree reported a 37% fall in adjusted core profit to 39.7 million pounds for the year ended Dec. 31, in line with its guidance.

($1 = 0.8155 pounds)

(This story has been corrected to say company has ‘raised prices’, not ‘plans to raise prices’, and to say ‘increased prices’, not ‘would raise prices’, in paragraphs 1 and 4)

(Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Mark Potter)

By Akash Sriram and Chavi Mehta

(Reuters) – The integration of OpenAI’s technology into Microsoft-owned Bing has driven people to the little-used search engine and helped it compete better with market leader Google in page visits growth, according to data from analytics firm Similarweb.

Page visits on Bing have risen 15.8% since Microsoft Corp unveiled its artificial intelligence-powered version on Feb. 7, compared with a near 1% decline for the Alphabet Inc-owned search engine, data till March 20 showed.

Bing traffic outperforms Google in the past month, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/MICROSOFT-GOOGLE/AI/myvmobayzvr/chart.png

The figures are an early sign of the lead the Windows maker has taken in its fast-moving race with Google for generative AI dominance, thanks to the technology behind ChatGPT, the viral chatbot that many experts have called AI’s “iPhone moment”.

They also underscore a rare opportunity for Microsoft to make inroads in the over $120 billion search market, where Google has been the dominant player for decades with a share of more than 80%.

Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co, said that he expects Bing to gain market share in search over the next coming months, especially if Google continues to delay the integration of generative AI into its product.

While Bing AI has been available to most users around the world since February, Google began the public release of its chatbot Bard only on Tuesday.

“Bing has less than a tenth of Google’s market share, so even if it converts 1% or 2% of users it will be materially beneficial to Bing and Microsoft,” Luria said.

App downloads for Bing have also jumped eight times globally after AI integration, according to app research firm Data.ai. Downloads for the Google search app fell 2% in the same period, the data showed.

Bing app downloads jump after AI integration, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/MICROSOFT-GOOGLEAI/myvmobaxzvr/chart.png

Still, some analysts said that Google, which in the early 2000s unseated then leader Yahoo to become the dominant search player, could overcome the early setbacks to maintain its lead.

“Google’s ranking algorithm can have a competitive edge over that of competitors”, Yongjei Jeong, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities in South Korea said, referring to how Google’s algorithm helped it beat Yahoo Search.

Google retains mobile dominance in February, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/MICROSOFT-ALPHABET/AI/znvnbllgavl/chart.png

(Reporting by Akash Sriram and Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni and Shounak Dasgupta)

By Dietrich Knauth

(Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson said on Wednesday that it would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to revive its effort to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits over its talc products through the bankruptcy of a subsidiary, after an appeals court refused to reconsider its ruling that the bankruptcy was improper.

J&J sought to use the bankruptcy of its subsidiary company, LTL Management, to halt more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging the company’s Baby Powder and other talc products are contaminated with asbestos, which J&J denies.

J&J maintains its consumer talc products are safe and confirmed through thousands of tests to be asbestos-free.

The bankruptcy strategy stumbled in January, when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Philadelphia ruled that LTL’s bankruptcy should be dismissed because neither LTL nor J&J had a legitimate need for bankruptcy protection because they were not in “financial distress.”

LTL Management asked the 3rd Circuit to reconsider its decision, a request the court unanimously rejected in a two-page ruling on Wednesday.

Leigh O’Dell, one of the lead attorneys representing plaintiffs in the lawsuits, said the 3rd Circuit’s ruling is another step toward ending Johnson & Johnson’s “attempted abuse of the bankruptcy system.”

J&J said Wednesday that it would ask the 3rd Circuit to pause the ruling from taking effect to allow the company time to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The judge overseeing LTL’s bankruptcy case, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan in Trenton, New Jersey, said in February that he was prepared to end the bankruptcy and allow talc lawsuits to resume once the 3rd Circuit issues a formal mandate of its January decision.

Before the bankruptcy filing, the company faced costs from $3.5 billion in verdicts and settlements, including one in which 22 women were awarded a judgment of more than $2 billion, according to bankruptcy court records.

J&J announced in 2020 that it would stop selling its talc Baby Powder in the United States and Canada due to what it called “misinformation” about the product’s safety and later announced its intent to discontinue the product worldwide in 2023.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva, Jonathan Oatis, Alexia Garamfalvi, Elaine Hardcastle)

By Yoruk Bahceli and Akriti Sharma

(Reuters) – UBS Group said on Wednesday it would buy back 2.75 billion euros ($2.96 billion) worth of debt it sold just days ago in a bid to boost confidence among bondholders rattled by its $3 billion rescue of rival Credit Suisse.

UBS’ takeover saw holders of Credit Suisse’s Additional Tier 1 bonds getting written down to zero while shareholders will receive some UBS stock, an unusual move that sees stock owners benefiting from better terms.

UBS is buying back its own bonds at the price at which they were sold on March 9 prior to the Credit Suisse deal rather than at market prices, compensating investors after a sell-off this week.

“They’re trying to be friendly to investors who purchased just before the mess,” said Jerome Legras, head of research at Axiom Alternative Investments, a fund which owned Credit Suisse AT1 bonds.

UBS in a statement said it was buying back a 1.5 billion-euro 4.625% fixed-rate note due March 2028 and a 1.25 billion-euro 4.750% fixed rate note due March 2032.

The notes are loss-absorbing senior unsecured bail-in notes.

Credit rating agency S&P revised its outlook on the holding company of UBS, the issuer of the bonds, to negative from stable on Monday, reflecting pressure on creditworthiness linked to the Credit Suisse deal.

Moody’s cut its ratings outlook across UBS’ entities to negative, while Fitch placed them on “watch negative”.

UBS shares and bonds have seesawed this week as investors assess the impact of the Credit Suisse deal.

On Monday the shares fell by as much as 17% only to close 35% higher than those lows on Tuesday. UBS bonds also tumbled, with its AT1 debt taking a big hit in particular on Monday. 

Credit Suisse AT1 bondholders weren’t compensated, which the bank’s AT1 prospectus spelled out could happen in Switzerland, but markets were still surprised, being used to seeing bondholders rank higher than equity holders who are to receive the value of the share offer.

The prices of the bonds UBS is buying back on Wednesday had also tumbled but partially recovered on Tuesday.

They rallied further following Wednesday’s announcement. The price of the March 2032 bond was up just under a point on the day as prices on both bonds rose near to the levels UBS is offering to pay bondholders, Tradeweb data showed.

“The issuer has decided to launch this exercise as a result of a prudent assessment of these recent developments and the issuer’s long-term commitment to its credit investors,” UBS said in its statement.

GRAPHIC: UBS buyback bonds https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/myvmobbqqvr/UBS%20seniors.png

The buyback was “fair” given the market volatility since the bonds were sold, a banker involved with the sale of the bonds said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

UBS shares closed down 3.7% at 18.71 Swiss francs ($21.05), having risen as much as 3.6% earlier.

(Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru and Yoruk Bahceli in Amsterdam, additional reporting by Amanda Cooper and Dhara Ranasinghe; editing by Mark Potter, Jason Neely, Kirsten)

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Alphabet’s Google is set to gain unconditional EU antitrust clearance for its acquisition of Croatian maths app Photomath, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Merger deals involving U.S. tech giants and start-ups have in recent months attracted intense regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic amid worries that some deals may be killer acquisitions where the goal is to shut down nascent rivals.

Google entered an agreement to acquire Photomath in May last year. Investors in the Croatian company include Menlo Ventures, LearnCapital, Goodwater Capital, GSV Ventures and Cherubic.

The European Commission, which is scheduled to decide on the deal by March 28, and Google declined to comment.

Photomath was started by an engineer and father looking to help his children with their math homework. The app has been downloaded more than 300 million times worldwide and is available in more than 30 languages.

(Reporting by Foo Yun CheeEditing by David Goodman, Elaine Hardcastle)

By Elizabeth Piper and Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak won the backing of parliament on Wednesday for a key element of a reworked post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland despite opposition from the province’s biggest unionist party and some of his lawmakers.

Sunak has tried to end years of wrangling over Brexit by revisiting one of the trickiest parts of the negotiations – to ensure smooth trade to Northern Ireland without creating a hard border with Britain or with European Union-member Ireland.

He agreed with the EU to introduce the “Stormont brake”, aimed at offering Northern Ireland more control over whether to accept any new EU laws, as part of the so-called Windsor Framework of measures.

But in Wednesday’s vote in the lower house of parliament, those he most wanted to win over – Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), some Conservative eurosceptics in the European Research Group (ERG) and his two predecessors, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – rebelled by voting against the brake.

Despite the opposition, Sunak won the vote by 515 to 29, managing to contain the size of the rebellion but with a substantial number of Conservatives abstaining. Opposition parties voted in support of the brake.

Sunak’s ministers welcomed the vote.

“I welcome parliament voting today to support the Windsor Framework,” Britain’s Northern Ireland minister Chris Heaton-Harris said on Twitter.

“This measure lies at the very heart of the Windsor Framework which offers the best deal for Northern Ireland, safeguarding its place in the Union and addressing the democratic deficit.”

The brake enables Britain to prevent new EU laws applying to goods in Northern Ireland if asked to do so by a third of lawmakers in the province’s devolved legislature.

The ERG has described the measure as “practically useless” and the DUP complains that it does not apply to existing EU law.

‘BRAKE WITH NO BRAKE PADS’

The new agreement was hammered out by Sunak, in office since October, after Johnson’s former government threatened to renege on the original deal it had struck with the EU.

A hard border risked endangering the Good Friday Agreement which largely ended three decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland involving militants seeking a united Ireland, “loyalists” wanting to remain part of the United Kingdom, and British security forces.

The United States has said that any threats to the agreement could hurt the possibility of a U.S.-British trade.

Sunak hailed securing the deal last month as a “decisive breakthrough” but by alienating the DUP he has failed in restoring the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

The DUP, at odds with opinion polls suggesting 45% of voters in the province support the framework versus 17% opposed, has said the brake does little to ease its concerns over the post-Brexit trading arrangements, saying it did not deal with the fundamental issue – the imposition of EU law.

DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson told parliament his party could not return to Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government “at this stage”.

Earlier, the ERG’s chairman Mark Francois told reporters the group had recommended to its members to vote against the government to show their discontent over what he called an “oversold” agreement that was a “brake with no brake pads”.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Kylie MacLellan, William James and Sarah Young, additional reporting by Amanda Ferguson in Belfast, Editing by William Maclean, Angus MacSwan and Jonathan Oatis)

By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday sniffed around for a way to resolve a dispute over a dog toy parodying a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle, though they clearly did not consider the case – exploring the boundary between creative expression and trademark infringement – an easy walk in the park. 

The justices heard arguments in Jack Daniel’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that the pun-laden “Bad Spaniels” vinyl chew toy sold by Phoenix-based VIP Products LLC qualifies as an “expressive work” protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc is owned by Louisville, Kentucky-based Brown-Forman Corp.

Some justices seemed wary of scrapping a longstanding legal test that provides an early off-ramp from costly litigation when parody items draw trademark infringement challenges, even as they acknowledged its imperfections and searched for alternatives.

“I’m concerned about the First Amendment implications of your position,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito told an attorney for Jack Daniel’s, referring to the constitutional provision enshrining free-speech protections.

“Could any reasonable person think that Jack Daniel’s had approved this use of the mark?” Alito asked.

The dispute pits the whiskey brand’s trademark rights against legal protections for creative expression – in this case a send-up by VIP Products of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Tennessee whiskey bottle featuring excrement-themed changes like a label reading “the Old No. 2, on your Tennessee Carpet.”

Lower courts ruled in favor of VIP Products after applying the so-called Rogers test – stemming from a dispute between actress Ginger Rogers and film director Federico Fellini. This test lets artists lawfully use another’s trademark when doing so has artistic relevance to their work and would not explicitly mislead consumers about its source.

The justices expressed mixed sentiments about whether the Rogers test, arising from a 1989 case in which she sued over a Fellini movie, struck the right balance between a company’s interest in protecting its corporate image against free speech protections.

Liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson posed sharp questions to a lawyer for VIP Products about whether the Rogers test was too permissive of “expressive works” that cause confusion. Jackson asked if products that risk confusing consumers should be allowed to sidestep a more-rigorous judicial test under which the nature of the product is just one of several factors under review.

“It sounds like what you’re doing is saying when you’re dealing with an expressive work, we get a pass under the Lanham Act,” Jackson said, referring to the federal statute that governs trademark law.

A lawyer for President Joe Biden’s administration urged the justices to discard the Rogers test in favor of the more-rigorous multi-factor test normally used in trademark-infringement cases, which looks squarely at whether the acts would likely cause marketplace confusion.

This so-called likelihood-of-confusion test can adequately account for lawsuits involving parodies, Justice Department lawyer Matthew Guarnieri said.

“Reasonable people are not likely to be confused about the source of those products,” Guarnieri added. “That intuition is fully captured by the likelihood-of-confusion test.”

Jack Daniel’s also contested a finding by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that VIP Product’s use of its trademark was noncommercial. The 9th Circuit reasoned that because the trademark was used not only to sell dog toys but also “to convey a humorous message,” it had not tarnished the distiller’s distinctive mark.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan expressed skepticism that the dog toy implicated free speech rights.

“This is a standard commercial product,” Kagan told a lawyer for VIP Products, Bennett Cooper. “This is not a political T-shirt, it’s not a film, it’s not an artistic photograph.”

Kagan added: “You’re using it as a source identifier. It seems like just not a First Amendment-Rogers kind of case.”

A decision in the case is expected by the end of June.

(Reporting by John Kruzel in Washington; Additional reporting by Blake Brittain; Editing by Will Dunham)

(Reuters) -Carvana Co said on Wednesday it expects a smaller core loss in the current quarter as its cost-cut measures have helped mitigate some impact of a decline in used-car sales.

The debt-laden company has taken a series of steps, including job cuts, over the past year to cut costs as it struggles to sell cars acquired at elevated prices, with buyers hit by inflation and worried about a recession cutting spending.

The company’s business model became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people opted for readily available used cars instead of newer vehicles whose supply was constrained due to semiconductor shortages.

But a fall in used-car sales, which one analyst has dubbed as a “used-car recession”, has pummeled the industry’s results over the last few quarters, raising concerns over Carvana’s financial health.

To relieve some of its debt concerns, Carvana also said on Wednesday it was offering creditors an option to exchange unsecured notes for those backed by collateral, in a move that will see repayment on some obligations pushed to 2028 from as early as 2025.

The offer would be for a principal amount of up to $1 billion in notes, with a condition that at least $500 million existing notes be validly tendered.

A debtholder group led by Apollo Global Management Inc and Pacific Investment Management Co (PIMCO) that holds most of Carvana’s more than $5 billion in bonds will oppose the debt restructuring plan, Bloomberg News reported.

Carvana’s shares that had surged as much as 29%, pared gains to 12% in afternoon trade following the report.

Apollo and PIMCO did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for a comment.

As of 2022 end, Carvana had total liabilities of $9.75 billion and assets of about $8.9 billion.

Carvana expects first-quarter core loss between $50 million and $100 million, down from a core loss of $348 million a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair and Kannaki Deka in BengaluruEditing by Vinay Dwivedi)

By Medha Singh

(Reuters) -Meme stock GameStop Corp surged nearly 41% on Wednesday as the video game retailer’s first profitable quarter in two years squeezed bearish investors and sparked off a rally in other stocks popular among retail traders.

GameStop, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc and several other names were at the heart of a meme-stock frenzy in 2021, which was driven by small investors coordinating on social media. A number of those names were up on Wednesday.

However, not everyone was convinced that the surge would kick off another round of extended gains.

“Crypto, meme stocks, IPOs, SPACs and other, speculative assets all peaked a long time ago and the easy-money frenzy of 2020-21 now looks like an aberration on price charts, not the start of a brave new world,” said AJ Bell Investment Director Russ Mould.

Grapevine, Texas-based GameStop surprised Wall Street analysts on Tuesday evening by reporting strong profits in the fourth quarter, thanks to a 16% drop in costs.

Investors took this as an early sign of a turnaround for GameStop, whose core business of selling new and pre-owned videogame disks is shrinking as consumers move to downloading games digitally or streaming.

“Luckily, this go-around is not due to meme investors, but an actual tangible fundamental event,” said David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, who does not have a position in the stock.

GameStop was the second most traded U.S. stock among retail traders, according to J.P. Morgan. The stock hit its highest level in more than four months with 54 million shares changing hands by 1:32 p.m. ET, among the top five most traded U.S. stocks.

Still, Mould said the share surge “looks to be the result of good cost control rather than top-line growth, which is not ideal”.

Another favorite among retail investors – Carvana Co – rose 11% after the used-car retailer said it expects a smaller core loss in the current quarter.

Among other highly shorted meme stocks, AMC shares were up 2.7%, Koss Corp climbed 6.8%, and the Roundhill MEME ETF rose 0.5%.

SOURING SHORT BETS

When there is a rush of demand from short sellers looking to exit bearish bets due to a rise in a stock’s price, it pushes prices even higher, resulting in a short squeeze.

Short sellers betting against GameStop have lost $610 million since the start of the week, analytics firm Ortex estimated, adding that about 24% of GameStop’s publicly available shares were in short position.

Wedbush raised its price target on GameStop’s shares to $6.50 from $5.30 after the results, as the brokerage said the lower cost structure reduces the risk of ongoing losses.

“We didn’t come because of shorts, we were here because of the brand name,” a retail trader with the username ‘ApeBeyondTheMoon’ wrote on investor-focused forum stocktwits.com.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel, Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Arun Koyyur)